Advent is About Listening

I am part of a liturgical church. Advent, the weeks before Christmas, is a time of new beginnings and getting ready.

Each week, we remind ourselves of our story and we share a meal. During Advent, we light one new candle each week as we anticipate and prepare ourselves.

Our pilgrimage has been through a long, quiet stretch of ordinary time. We continue on, hoping without much tangible evidence that there is more to our story. Our year has ground on through the dry and dusty days of summer. We try to always be ready, but there seems so little reason.

Slowly but surely, we begin to hear whispers of hope. Some of us lean forward, straining to capture the murmurs. Some are too busy to listen; some cannot yet hear the hope of things to come. For some, hope is drowned out by the noises all around us.

Advent is about listening.

We begin our liturgical year not with parades and parties, but with being open. Each year we are reminded that after we have waited as long as we think we can, so long that we almost surrender to despair, we begin to hear a faint sound of hope on the breeze.

At first it is only sounds, then syllables. The message is faint not because it is from far away, but because we are out of practice. Our story is within us, but we become distracted and forget how to listen. We are beginning; the voices grow stronger as we remember how to pay attention.

Over the weeks of Advent we begin to hear the message and the music again, and remember that hope is on the way.

Can you hear the first whispers yet?

[Image by emmma peel]